Adventures in radio - December 2022

2022-12-16 Rainy Day ham radio Projects

I should be finishing up my Christmas shopping, but the weather, slightly warmer than the past couple of days, is raining and cold. It feels colder than it is, but coffee, a fireplace, and a couple of curious canine helpers should be fun taking care of some overdue ham radio projects.

I made a quick trip to Harbor Freight in the morning for some Torx security bits to work on the mAT-705Plus ATU ( mAT-705Plus ATU)

I returned to reinstalling my 2M and 6M indoor loops (2M and 6M VHF magloop antennas, that at a glance, "could" be mistaken for modern indoor art. I had taken these down when I redid the office/ham shack, but it's time to put them back up again. I basically mounted them on a round wooden base which solves the stability problem that I had with them unmounted and now, on the base, they are stable and do actually look like a conversation piece. My next step is to run some tests just to ensure that they still work and that they do not interfere with each other in operation by being so close.

I am planning to use the IC-705 more on the desk and will take it out of the LC-192 backpack, which is heavy and primarily stays under the desk. I am designing a case that will both fit on the desk and be quickly closed and taken out in the field. The indoor FM magloops will work well with the IC-705.

2022-12-12 Rollover twitter

I've had several Twitter accounts for over a decade. I have used Twitter far more in the past than I do now, but given the state of bird-land, it feels more hostile and mean-spirited than fun. Of course, some of that feeling is because every news reporter seems to be on Twitter and trolling any micro or macro celebrity (at least in their mind) for the sensational headline-making tweet.
I have/had a Mastodon account since about when it started (2016, I think) but have no idea at the moment what email address I registered it under, so I set up two new Mastodon accounts. I left the Twitter account saying I've moved on, and I guess there will now be toots instead of tweets.